A Year in the Business of Writing

[rowyn]

Graph of Amazon sales for A Rational Arrangement, from June 24, 2015 through September 30, 2016:



(This graph is only Amazon Kindle sales because Draft2Digital, my distributor for the other book stores, does not break out sales by day. I generated it in Google, though, since Amazon will only generate a graph for the last three months or less.)

First Year Sales by Month of A Rational Arrangement:

Pre-launch: 36
1st Month: 507
2nd Month: 292
3rd Month: 146
4th Month: 68
5th Month: 75
6th Month: 37
7th Month: 38
8th Month: 90
9th Month: 36
10th Month: 45
11th Month: 39
12th Month: 35

Total Sales for A Rational Arrangement, from 6/24/2015 to 9/30/2016: 1,496.
Total Sales for Further Arrangements, from 2/1/2016 to 9/30/2016: 428.

At this point, sales of A Rational Arrangement have not quite flatlined: it sold 5 copies in September. Likewise, Further Arrangements has almost stopped selling: 10 copies in September.

I put both books on sale last week, at the same time I released The Moon Etherium. This move probably generated a few sales, but as the low totals show, they're still basically moribund.

The Moon Etherium's first week of sales have not been impressive either: 33 so far. That's about half of Further Arrangements's sales in its first week, and less than a third of A Rational Arrangement's.

*

My net income for my first year as an author was about $6,400: something like $5500 from ARA and $900 from FA. I'm happy with that total. It's by no means livable as a sole source of income, but it's nonethelesss much better than I'd expected to do by self-publishing. I didn't seriously expect ARA to make even a thousand dollars when I released it, much less over $5000.

I really wanted to write this post because many of my friends saw that first Monthiversary sales report from me back in July 2015, and I think it conjured an image of my sales as much higher overall than they've actually been. Moreover, it might have left the impression that things would only get better: my next books would be as successful or moreso. Not so much.

I don't anticipate that my second year will go as well as my first year. I intend to keep plugging away at this writing gig, regardless. What would I do if I didn't write, anyway? I will probably try some more new things.  Perhaps some of them will work better!  Or worse. Let's find out!

Purchase links for books:
A Rational Arrangement (standalone M/M/F fantasy romance): Amazon ~ Kobo ~ Nook ~ iBooks ~ Print
Furher Arrangements (three romance novellas in the same setting as A Rational Arrangement): Amazon ~ Kobo ~ Nook ~ iBooks
The Moon Etherium (standalone M/F fantasy romance with bisexual protagonist, new setting): Amazon ~ Kobo ~ Nook ~ iBooks

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Aww. It deserves to sell more. n.n Maybe serializing RA helped?

[rowyn]

Serializing RA might have helped, yup. :) There were some other factors that were not really within my control (for example, several people decide to review RA within the first couple of days of its posting, and The Moon Etherium is still languishing without a review, poor thing. *pats it*)

I do plan to serialize it, though. Not sure when that will launch; Alinsa is going to work on a Wordpress for me to use with it.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

You just need to get plugged by more people. ^_^ And suddenly there will be BOOM!

[rowyn]

Maybe some tuft-eared kitty will even endorse it! }:)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

This is very cool data. :D Congrats on the success! That's more than you'd make writing books for Harlequin, I think.

[rowyn]

I'd have sold more books through a large publisher, in all likelihood, but not necessarily have made any more money, yes. ARA made professional-level money for me -- the low end of it, granted! But still there. :)